


The Ghost Of You Lingers

by hotdammneron



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotdammneron/pseuds/hotdammneron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn "lived" in the decrepit apartment building for about 100 years. Everything passed through, nobody staying for more than a few weeks. There was one exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost Of You Lingers

Finn had (mostly) lived in the small apartment building for about 60 years. Most of the crumbling apartment complex remained uninhabited for the time he had resided there, leaving him in general peace and quiet. Occasionally a new person would move in, generally causing a racket during the late hours of the night. It only took a few well-placed cupboard slams and missing phone chargers for them to move right back out within a few weeks. Sometimes he took up other tactics, such as whispers in the night and making some cold spots in the house. He enjoyed messing with any paranormal investigators who people hired, adopting fake personas of dead kids whenever they tried to communicate. Because of the building’s minor reputation of assorted hauntings, all of which were actually just Finn, not many people ever moved in. Finn appreciated this.   
Sometimes, new residents would show up who didn’t really bother Finn, so he never really haunted them as much as the rowdier people. He’d throw in a few tricks just because he was bored, but most of them moved out eventually anyway. The apartment building felt like it was always in motion, never quite standing still despite its stationary form, because things inside were always moving and changing. There were no other spirits permanently inhabiting it besides Finn, except a few mice who kept to themselves in the walls. Everything else that came through was fleeting, arriving and then leaving nearly as soon as it arrived. The only constant was Finn. He was used to the impermanence of everyone else, being as even the landlord changed frequently. This is why he was surprised when anyone stayed for more than a few months.

His regular peaceful existence was disturbed by loud thumping from the stairs. He drifts over to the second floor from where he was situated in the rafters, seeing a kid who was probably in his mid twenties dragging a large suitcase up the stairs. He has a small squirming dog tucked under one arm, and his keys dangling from that hand. He struggled up the last few stairs and continued down the hall, putting down the dog and gesturing at it to stay put, jamming the key into the lock of apartment number 23 and shoving the door open. He nudges the dog through the door, dragging his suitcase behind him and kicking the door back closed.   
“It’s not much, but it’ll have to do.”  
He says this to the dog comfortingly, but Finn can tell that he also directs it at himself. Nobody is ever ecstatic about moving into apartments in this building, with a ghost mouse problem and a scenic view of alleys where people often get mugged (Finn knows this alley in particular’s mugging problem far too personally). Leaving his bag on the ground by the door, he settles down on the sinking couch against the wall, rubbing his eyes as the dog lays next to him. Finn lingers in the corner of the room, remaining unseeable as he watches the new man. Eventually he gets off of the couch and goes to unpack his bag, having only a few possessions that he places in various locations around the room. Something about him brings an odd feeling to Finn, though he couldn’t quite place it. He seems to carry an aura of sadness around him. Finn decides to leave, walking through the wall and making sure to rattle the doorknob quietly before he exits. 

Three months pass, and the sad man stays in the apartment complex. Even most landlords didn’t stay in the place that long. Finn eventually finds his name to be Poe, overheard in a few phone calls he listens in on from time to time. He leaves for a few hours most days, probably going to work, but never goes out besides these occasions. Whenever he comes back he smells like oil and metal, a strong scent that travels through most of the apartment building after a while. He always seems tired, and with this comes the all-encompassing sad feeling that fills his room even in his absence. Finn wants badly to help him, to try and find a way to lift this melancholy aura that surrounds him, but doesn’t know how he can do so without exposing his whole ghost situation. Poe talks to his dog a lot, and refers to her as Bea. Sometimes the dog seems to notice Finn, who frequently finds himself lingering in apartment 23, fascinated by this oddly long lasting new resident. It sometimes seems like Poe cares more about his dog than he does himself, making sure she has enough food but not bothering himself with eating on some days. 

After another few months, Finn has gotten used to having another seemingly permanent person in the apartment complex. The building changed landlords yet again in the time since Poe arrived, and multiple neighbors had come and gone. Finn still resides primarily in the rafters and spare rooms, attempting to pass eternity nearly trapped in a crumbling apartment building. One night, he drifts through the halls aimlessly, any other residents currently asleep, stopping occasionally to duck into a room and hide someone’s keys before continuing through the building. He stops on the second floor, slipping into room number 24, currently empty, and lays down othe floor. Laying in silence for a few minutes, he tunes into the assorted noises of the apartment building. The buzz of traffic outside, the occasional creak of a floorboard, the chatter of dead mice in the walls, muffled sobbing, dogs barking. Muffled sobbing.   
The muffled sobbing was new, and it seemed to be coming from the opposite side of one of the room’s walls. If he had his bearings correct after nearly a hundred years living here, that was room twenty three- Poe’s room. He floats up from the ground, passing imperceptibly through the wall and into the adjacent apartment, finding himself suddenly faced with Poe’s sparsely decorated bedroom. While he may be a ghost, Finn has a good grasp on common decency, and knows not to just go into a guy’s bedroom usually, so he had never been in there before. He had expected a bit more from the room, at least some trinkets from his past, or a nice lampshade, or something. Instead he sees nearly blank walls, with just one poster of an old plane, a framed photo of someone’s (presumably Poe’s) family, and a clock mounted on one of the walls. There were three, somehow thriving, potted plants on a windowsill.   
As Finn focuses on small aspects of Poe’s room, he is snapped out of his thoughts by a series of loud, high-pitched barks from Poe’s bed. Startled awake, Poe sits upright, eyeing the door warily as he reaches behind his back, pulling a small pistol from behind his pillow. Finn freezes, standing in the corner of the small room as Poe points the gun directly at him.  
“How the fuck did you get in?”  
“I can explain, just-”  
“Tell me how you got into my apartment.”  
“I walked through the wall-”  
“Bullshit. I double lock my doors and windows. How did you get in?”  
“I already told you, I walked through the wall.”  
“You think you’re being funny?”  
“No, I’m being totally serious here-”  
“Bullshit.”  
Before Finn can say anything else in his weak defense, Poe quickly pulls a knife from his boot beside his bed, hurling it with deadly accuracy across the room at Finn. Where it should have hit him directly in the stomach, instead the knife passes right through him and lands with a thud into the wall behind him.   
“What the fuck.”  
“Dude, why did you throw a knife at me?”  
“Why didn’t it hit you? Who are you?”  
“My name’s Finn.”  
“Get out.”   
“Listen, hear me out-”  
“Get out of my fucking apartment.”  
“Make me.”  
Poe takes this opportunity and grips the gun a bit tighter, keeping his eyes on Finn across the room as his hand shakes a bit. He squeezes the trigger, the bang of the shot echoing through the silent apartment building as the bullet speeds through the room and into the wall directly behind where Finn stands.  
“How the fuck do you keep doing that?”  
“Stop shooting me and I can explain?”  
“I’d rather not.”  
Taking this as a queue to leave, Finn raises his eyebrows and walks backward out of the room through the closed door. Poe settles back down into his uncomfortable bed, tucking the pistol behind his pillow again and making a mental note to remove the knife from his wall in the morning. Bea nuzzles her nose into his side, and she helps him get back to a relatively restful sleep within the next hour. Finn returns to the top level of the apartment complex, settling down in a corner and reading the same book he had read at least a hundred times, passing the night without anyone else shooting him.

The next night, Finn can hear the sound of crying again, but he makes no motion to approach Poe again after he attempted to kill him twice. He hears the same crying each night, sometimes louder than other nights, and wishes there was some way he could help. Instead of talking to Poe directly, he finds other ways to help him around his apartment. He never seems to notice the small things that Finn does, which is probably for the best. Finn washes his dishes from time to time, does his laundry when it’s been over a week, and feeds Bea while he’s at work if he forgets to. Poe sometimes seems to think that he did these tasks but forgot that he did, shrugging off his confusion as to who washed his dishes to just appreciate the fact that the apartment is sort of clean all of a sudden. Finn doesn’t expect any kind of recognition for his work, especially as he doesn’t have anything better to do.   
Poe’s crying and occasional nightmares persist every night, as they had for months. He dreamed of losing everything, losing everyone, including himself. He dries his eyes, holds Bea closer, and tries to shrug off the sadness and fear that threatens to suffocate him at any minute. He had already lost enough, he couldn’t afford to lose himself any further. He only had himself at this point. And Bea, but it wasn’t like she could wash the dishes or take care of him or anything, no matter how much he wished. He ignores the unsettlingly echoing mouse noises from the walls and returns to at least some slightly restful sleep. 

Poe wishes there was someone out there who cared enough about him to try and help him, someone he could be totally honest to about all the things that were going wrong in his life and try to feel better sometimes. His co-workers had enough of their own problems, and he didn’t want to bother his family with this since whatever nonsense happened last summer. Sometimes the nightmares got to be too much, and he would have to skip work due to lack of sleep or generally just feeling terrible. He’s always so tired, feeling the ache down to his bones, a longing for an uninterrupted break from his life.  
He sits awake (as usual) in his bed, Bea at his side, and can’t help but cry. Sometimes he tries to hold that kind of thing back, but it gets harder to bottle up emotions as time goes on. Right as he lets out a shaky sob, the dog nuzzling closer into his side, he hears a tentative knock at his door. Someone was knocking at his door at four in the morning. Pulling on his boots from his bedside, he makes sure to remove his knife from inside before doing what he had done far too many times and stabbing himself in the foot. Poe treads silently from his bedroom to the front door. Taking a look through the small window in the door, he sees someone he vaguely remembers from some long-lost memory looking back at him. He seems trustworthy enough, though Poe can’t quite place where he knows him from, so he unfastens the deadbolt and pulls the door open enough for him to see into the hall.

“What do you want?”  
“I want to talk to you.”  
“What about?”  
“Something important.”  
“It’s the middle of the night, but whatever. Come inside.”  
“Promise not to shoot me this time?”  
“What the fuck?”  
“Last time I was here, you threw a knife at me. And shot me. Can we not relive that?”  
“Don’t do anything weird and I’ll consider it.”  
“Can I just come in?”  
“I guess.”

Finn half walks, half floats into Poe’s nearly empty living room, the small dog running out of the now-vacant bedroom and barking furiously at him as he settles himself on the couch. She jumps to the couch next to him, rearing up to sit on his lap, but jumping away as her paws fall through what should be his leg. Poe follows him into the living room, sitting in an empty chair across from the couch and staring critically at Finn. He had a lot of chairs for someone who never had anyone over. Finn shifts uncomfortably in his seat, the other man still glaring at him from across the room. They both begin to speak at the same time, Poe prevailing and finishing his sentence. 

“Why are you here?”  
“Can we talk?”  
“We’re talking.”  
“Listen, I hear you in the night, you never sleep, you cry constantly, are you okay?”  
“Good question. Next.”  
“Is there any way I can help?”  
“What’s your deal? Are you a human? An actual, living person?”  
“Uh, I’m a ghost.”  
“God, this again? That’s bullshit.”  
“Are you kidding me? Your dog just stuck her foot through my thigh and you don’t think I’m serious about being a damn ghost?”  
“There’s no way you’re a ghost.”  
“Stop evading my questions. Do you need help? Do you need to talk?”  
“Do you know that it’s none of your business?”  
“I’m basically your neighbor, I can’t help but care. How can I help?”  
“Whatever.”  
“I’ve been washing your dishes for a month. I feed your dog. Can I help you in some way that you actually know about?”  
Poe sighs and runs his hands through his hair, non-responsive. The two of them sit in silence for what seems like an eternity, Finn looking at him as he stares vacantly at the ceiling. The dog, Bea, moves from the couch to take up a defensive napping position on Poe’s lap. Despite the near-stranger’s watching eye, Poe falls asleep after about fifteen minutes, one hand on the dog and the other on the arm of his chair. Finn leaves minutes following this, not wanting to overstay his already reluctant welcome. 

Finn goes to apartment number 23 the following night, knocking at the door again and being ushered in hesitantly by the main resident yet again. The two of them sit in the same places as the previous night in the living room, Poe still seeming nervous and Finn definitely keeping his guard up around this guy who had already tried to kill him twice the first time they officially met. They talk about Finn’s life, his residence in the apartment complex, and Finn explains how different things have become over the course of the nearly 100 years he has been in the world. Within an hour, Poe falls asleep curled around Bea in his chair, and Finn leaves a few minutes later. At least he could do this much.

**Author's Note:**

> This took totally forever but here this is  
> tumblr: hotdammneron


End file.
